


A Messy Pet Project by the Name of Pitch Black

by Caelyn



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Baggage, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Possession, Romance, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:52:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caelyn/pseuds/Caelyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the years go by the Guardians grow stronger and stronger while Pitch seems to be growing stranger and more monstrous. Besides Jack the other Guardians seem to think nothing of it but the newly instated Guardian of Fun isn't so sure.</p>
<p>After all it is a Guardian's job to help people and that duty isn't completely seclusive to believing children...or so Jack had naively thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings and salutations kindred fellows and fanfiction loving comrades! 
> 
> I would like to thank my friends on DA (RalphTMNT and Crimsonoid) for taking the time to read through my rough first idea/pass on the story and giving me really helpful grammar/story flow advice. 
> 
> Thank you so much raven2547 for your extremely helpful beta-reading and story flow fixes! 
> 
> In regards to me as a writer it's been awhile since I've written a fanfic so please bare with me as I get back into the jam of it again. 
> 
> Without further ado or delay please enjoy and thank you for reading!

“ _Frosssst_ ” The Guardian of fun winces at the furious hot breath that scorches against his ear. Jack meagerly tries swallowing but can’t seem to manage it past the black thorny nails that bite at his neck and the rough palm that presses into his windpipe.  
   
Jack might be more concerned if he actually needed to breathe but he didn’t so he indulges the Boogieman as the shadow master snarls and hisses threats at him. Some of which are actually pretty darn imaginative…  
   
And descriptive…..  
   
… And probably would have made a lesser man cry.  
   
Jagged teeth snap centimeters from Jack’s nose but the frost sprite offers no reaction and puts on his best devil may care face. The expression he saves for occasions such as these.  
   
Pitch has, as Jack and the other Guardians observed, become much more vicious and feral since his defeat. These changes range from how he attacks to the way he holds himself. Even the way he now speaks is crueler and much more needling than before.  
   
 _‘Barbaric elegance.’_ Jack muses poetically.  
   
Noticing Jack’s mind has wandered, Pitch quickly amends the nuance by viciously jerking the younger spirit toward his snarling face (by the neck no less) and then slamming Jack back into the stone wall behind him. The back of Jack’s head slaps against the hard surface sickeningly, brilliant stars dance across his eyes.  
   
Jack fights back a pained moan that rises up in his throat like vomit, the sound threatening to spill over his lips but he grits his teeth against it.  
   
 _‘A lesser man may have cried but a smarter one might have thought to be a little more self-conscious when traipsing through an enemy’s lair.’_ Jack muses hatefully at himself.  
   
“Pay attention Frost!” The low rumble of words vibrates low in Pitch’s chest and into the fingertips Jack had pressed to the older spirit for balance and to keep him at bay.  
   
“I might if you actually had something _friendly_ to say.” Jack rasps back, and although he doesn’t need air to live he does very much need it to speak and to snipe back at his ‘number one fan.’  
   
Pitch’s hand, of course, tightens further about his thin neck as if it hears Jack’s thought.  
   
“Stop your **idiotic** blathering and tell me what you think you are you doing in my home?!” The other grey monstrous hand, the one not trying to crush Jack’s favorite and only neck, grasps the frost spirit’s slight shoulder and shakes him as if the motion could shake Jack’s brain back in place.  
   
Fat chance.  
   
Bunny had tried that numerous times.  
   
There was a long beat of silence, Pitch’s silver eyes stare heavily and calculating into Jack’s own. The frost sprite chews his lower lip, nervous in the silence and very aware of the bareness of his hands. His staff had been snatched away by Pitch’s shadows not but five seconds into their _‘delightful’_ conversation.  
   
Thankfully, though, Pitch had not broken it apart again. Jack was sure he would have felt it ripping horribly through the center of his chest if the Nightmare King had.  
   
Unbidden, Jack’s mind pulls up a flash back to the South Pole, of an empty hollow in the center of his chest that made his head spin and teeth hurt. A murky memory made up of grinning crooked teeth and sharp, golden eyes that burned into him like acid.  
   
 ** _‘Why did I come here again?’_** Jack once again tries to swallow, and, once again, he can’t.  
   
He takes in the unnaturalness that had settled over Pitch’s face, the rolling darkness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before...  
   
 ...And Jack remembers _why_.  
   
“I am going to charitably remove my hand from your throat now,” Pitch is saying, and this recaptures Jack’s flighty attention.  
   
“Once I do, you are going to tell me… in as. **Few**. **Words**. **As**. **Possible** …” This sentence is punctuated by Pitch repeatedly shaking Jack like a rag doll against the wall.  
   
 “…Why you are trespassing and why I shouldn’t feed you to my shadows and nightmares,” Pitch threatens, this being his favorite and only style of conversation with Jack.  
   
Eying him warily, Pitch slowly releases his grip on Jack’s neck until only his first three fingers press lightly to Jack’s Adams apple.  
   
Somehow that feels worse than being strangled, but Jack doesn’t linger long on that thought.  
   
Resisting the urge to massage the sore bruises no doubt forming on his neck, it dawns on Jack that it is now his turn to talk; that he needs to speak to Pitch with maturity and reason and not hide behind his jibes and easy laughter.  
   
 It is extremely important Jack does this the right way, but for the life of him he can’t piece together how to go about it.  
   
Jack’s mind goes into frantic overdrive. He searches himself and desperately scrambles to find an explanation that would justify him to the boogieman. Words that would spin together so neatly, that would expertly and seamlessly explain what he is doing here and what he thinks he can achieve by seeking Pitch out.  
   
These are words that Jack hasn’t even been able to gather for himself or say aloud much less organize them so that they would make sense to someone else.  
   
To be honest it is more of a deep ever pressing feeling that has steadily taken root in Jack’s mind and grown deeper and deeper each time he saw the fallen boogieman. Over the years Jack watched as Pitch became more monster than man.  
   
His shadows became less and less an extension of himself and more a parasite that seemed to stumble hungrily after the Nightmare King’s diminishing form. There was a strain in all of Pitch’s movements and a painful hollowness to his elegant cheeks. Pitch’s silver eyes had sunken deeper into his skull and seemed to be asking for something... _anything_.  
   
“Well?” Pitch prompted, “What do you think you are doing?”  
                                                                                                  
“I’m uh…I’m getting to that. Maybe if you would give me a little spac-,“ The hand rewraps around his throat, cuts Jack off before it loosens again.  
   
 “Or not! Jeez! Just…ok…Look, just bear with me here for a second,” Jack pleads his thoughts racing.  
   
“You are wasting my time, Jack Frost. While you may have influence over simpletons and giggling fairies. I’m afraid your charms are lost on me,” Pitch huffs at him. His words stiff and frustrated.  
   
“So I will ask one last time: what are you doing here?”  
   
Before Pitch can strangle, shake or otherwise maim him again, Jack blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.  
   
“Something is happening to you…It’s something bad isn’t it? Something really, really bad. I wanted…I… I want to help you!”  The words leave Jack in a tactless rush.  
   
 Jack immediately wants to snatch them back up into his mouth and swallow them.  
   
Pitch looks as if he has been slapped.  
   
His fingers fall away from Jack as he takes a large, clumsy step back; flinches and grinds his sharp teeth. Jack’s momentary embarrassment is completely forgotten in the enormity of Pitch’s reaction and he knows he is on to something.  
                                 
He hadn’t been wrong or deluded in thinking something was going on with Pitch. Seeing the boogieman momentarily stunned into listening Jack quickly pressed on.  
   
“It’s true, isn’t it? It’s like your loosing some sort of battle with _these things_!” Jack gestured half franticly to the writhing mass of shadows at Pitch’s feet then to the oily fat ones leaching sluggishly off of his back.  
   
Pitch shrunk further away from the youngest Guardian and stared around blurrily at his shadows as if it were the first time he was aware of them. Jack was stunned to see Pitch’s expression briefly sift to one of horror and panic.  The Nightmare King coiled in on himself as if trying to draw away from the ever-following mass of inky creatures that gazed back at him with hungry milky, yellow eyes.  
   
“Pitch….what…what’s happening…? What’s happening to you?” Jack took a step toward the older spirit, his pale hands facing up showing the boogieman that he meant no harm.  
   
That he wanted to help.  
   
Pitch gave no notice to him and continued to stare down at his shadows. His face ever so slightly pinching together as if he were reacting to things they were saying to him, awful things.  
   
Jack’s hands started to shake.  
   
“What’s wrong with you?”  The winter spirit asked as delicately as he could, his words carefully smoothed down and dusted with pity.  
   
Suddenly with an inhuman snarl, Pitch rushed forward and was looming over Jack, baring his teeth like some wild crazed thing. Jack gasped, shooting backwards in alarm only to collide painfully into the stonewall behind him. Jack watched stupefied as Pitch’s silver eyes burned away to molten gold, his teeth elongating to thin dangerous spikes.  
   
For the first time in a long time Jack felt fear fill his stomach and rise up in his throat. Fear for himself and ridiculously enough, fear for Pitch as well.  
   
“I do not _**need**_ nor do I _**want**_ false pity from you, Jack Frosssst.”  Hissing out Jack’s name, Pitch slammed his hand into the wall next to Jack’s head, caging Jack in.  
   
Pitch’s black nails, now black claws, were digging into the hard stone of the wall’s surface and to Jack’s amazement watched as pieces of it crumbled away beneath them and turned to dust. Jack thought back to those same claws that earlier had been pressing into his throat. He realized then how much Pitch had been holding back, that his flesh could be shredded and pulled apart like warm bread beneath those claws.  
   
“As far as you are concerned Jack, I am not your problem. Any misfortune of miiinnnne should be celebrated by you and your preciousss Guardians.”  
   
It becomes harder and harder to understand Pitch’s voice, it blends with lower inhuman tones of the surrounding shadows. Pitch’s voice seems to be moving around Jack. It fills up the entirety of the space around them and fills him with dread.  
   
From this close Jack can actually see the shadows moving beneath Pitch’s skin. Thin, threaded veins spread out like dead tree branches, pulsating black ink just below the surface. Jack’s chest seizes up as he realizes how bad off Pitch really is.  
   
He is so much worse than what Jack and the Guardians originally believed.  
  
Pitch looks as if he is infected with some sort of unimaginable illness.  
   
He looks monstrous, insane.  
   
A small and _very_ wise voice in Jack’s head whispers to him that now is a good time to try and escape. Maybe he can throw Pitch a good-natured _‘back the hell up off me’_ head butt that will catch the crazed shadow wielder off guard.  
   
Forget the staff—Pitch looks like he might actually _eat him_.  
   
In any other situation, that eccentric thought would have made Jack laugh, but not now.  Not with the way Pitch is watching him so intently as if Jack is some new and shiny toy Pitch would like nothing more to pull apart and break. Jack swallows, feels uncomfortable and itchy in his skin. His eyes dart around trying to find a way out of the mess he has gotten himself into, but he can’t see anything except the writhing mass of shadows.  
   
The silence stretches on and Pitch doesn’t move. Jack keeps expecting and hoping the boogieman will finally burst out and laugh at him. Jack hopes he’ll make some cutting, snide jab at Jack’s expense, something about how easy it is to rile him up and frighten him. Or about how Jack is a foolish child, a favorite insult of Pitch’s.  
   
But the quietness drags on and on and Pitch doesn’t say anything and Jack’s fear grows and grows.  
   
The fear unfurls and blooms throughout his small, quaking frame. It’s hot and burning as if it has taken a whole new life that Jack wishes he never knew it could. Pitch and his shadows become completely and eerily still. His golden eyes glaze over and slide to a near close until they are just slits that burn down at Jack. A tremor runs up Jack’s spine with the weight of that gaze, something akin to a cold sweat beaks out across his forehead and back.  
   
“ _Pitch_ ,” Jack whispers.  
   
Hysterically, Jack wonders why he’s whispering at all. It’s as if by lowering his voice it will make Pitch less aggressive, that a quiet, calm sound may quiet and calm the Nightmare King.  
   
But it doesn’t.  
   
This new creature before Jack doesn’t take any notice to it’s own name at all. Jack is about to try again when Pitch starts moving.  
   
Tilting his head slightly to the side, the shadowed man leans into Jack’s personal space, not that there was much of that left anyway. Jack realizes with some shred of morbid fascination that Pitch has started to breathe in deeply through his open mouth and nose. The sharp lines that make up Pitch’s frame become hazy and smudged into the living darkness around them.  
   
Somewhere outside himself, Jack thought on how foolish he had been to come here alone. That, as soon as he had lost the protection of his staff, he should have immediately gone to the other Guardians for help and not to try to confront Pitch by himself.  
   
Jack remembers that no one knows he is here. No one would think to come looking for him for several days and by then… _what_?  
   
Hundreds of awful thoughts and scenarios flash across his mind and Jack’s fear impossibly intensifies.  
   
There is a flash of inhuman movement; a blackened, squirming mass that joins itself messily together before rushing at Jack all at once, the frost sprite keenly aware that this thing is Pitch.  
   
This creature, who is pressing so desperately against Jack’s front, is somehow still Pitch… and yet not him at all. The Nightmare King’s clawed hands burrow into Jack’s blue hoodie. Long, gnarled fingers twist and tear at the heavy fabric as if trying to climb inside Jack’s chest.  Shadow tendrils bleed out from seemingly everywhere, crawling across the walls and out of Pitch’s skin to wrap, writhing and frantic, around Jack’s wrists and ankles before breaking into smaller tendrils that spread out and curl about Jack’s person further.  
   
If Pitch hadn’t been holding onto him, molding himself to Jack so completely, Jack is sure he would have shaken apart with fear.  
   
He has never been this afraid of Pitch before and the boogieman knows it too.  
   
A long, arched nose presses hungrily into Jack’s neck, making the young Guardian wince; the pressure was painful due to earlier strangling. Turning his face away from Pitch, Jack presses his cheek into the wall behind him. Jack can feel air being sucked up greedily off his skin; a small voice in his head helpfully supplying him with the knowledge that _Pitch Black_ is actually _smelling him_.  
   
Jack knows he should have figured out why Pitch is acting this way, but he can’t think of anything besides his fear.  
   
Pitch unfurls his hands and slides his large, monstrous palms down Jack’s front to hold him at his sides, a few inches above Jack’s waist. Thumbs press slightly into the bottom of Jack’s ribs. The frost sprite takes that as a silent queue that he isn’t going anywhere soon and to hold still.  
   
Jack chokes out a startled noise from that back of his throat, feeling the unmistakable points of teeth graze along the skin just behind his ear down to where neck meets collarbone. There is a low, hungry sound that rumbles out from Pitch and is echoed by the hundreds of creatures seeping off of him and onto Jack. Another tremor runs down Jack’s back, answering the sound.  
   
 _That is enough of that._  
   
Although Bunnymund would deny it, Jack could in fact work slowly, quietly and even carefully when he wanted to. Or rather to say, Jack could when he _needed_ to and that is just what he did. Placing his bare feet flat against the wall behind him, Jack bent his knees slowly and carefully so as not to alert Pitch.  
   
He drew in a small calming breath, curling himself up and tensing up all at once. Jack kicked off the wall and took off like a shot, his hands tucked into his sides for impact. Jack plunged his boney shoulder right into the center of the boogieman’s chest.  
   
Pitch didn’t make any sound like Jack expected him to do as he was thrown back. The boogieman silently fell away to crumble to the ground in a heap. Jack threw his arms out in front of him taking a few jarring steps forward before he regained his balance, his frame and nerves tense as a live wire.  
   
The child of winter watched the shadows slink almost shyly away from him to reattach themselves greedily to Pitch. The shade uttering out a low moan as if it hurt him terribly for them to do so, it was one of the most painfully disturbing things Jack had ever seen.  
   
The Guardian wanted so very badly to run away.  
   
To return to the surface full of dazzling light and wind that would carry him far far away from the darkness and fear but that pained moan had frozen him in place and he knew he couldn’t leave Pitch like this. Whatever was happening to him was horrible and wrong and now, undeniable.  
   
Besides Guardians don’t run away. Guardians help.  
   
So instead of fleeing Jack forced his shaking legs to approach Pitch’s collapsed form.  
   
“It’s going to be ok…” Jack whispered out to comfort Pitch but really it was to comfort himself.  
   
“Everything is going to be ok…”     
   
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> Thank you everyone so much for the kudos, comments and bookmarks! I cherish them all :D Thank you again my awesome Beta raven2547 for your help and for putting up with this long chapter! 
> 
> Hope everyone has been doing well and I hope you enjoy this next chapter!

Perhaps this was pay back for all the countless times he went just a touch too far with his gift of fun. Such offenses to karma no doubt included freezing a kid's tongue to a flagpole on a dare from his friends or making an uptight businessman lose his balance on a convenient and well-placed patch of ice.

Really though, all that was in the spirit of fun and no one got hurt anyway, not really. The kids always got themselves unstuck with their tongues mostly intact and the businessmen picked themselves back up, though a bit embarrassed, to fight on for another dollar.

These mischievous acts were Jack at his worst. The extent of his villainy was inconvenient to his victims at best.

So why in the name of MIM did he keep finding himself in these truly undeserving and unpleasant situations? Hunched precariously over a fallen boogeyman, his pale hands reaching out hesitantly toward the crumpled older spirit. Jack was unsure of whether to help Pitch up or hit him for his attack.

If ‘ _attack'_ was what Jack could even call whatever THAT had been.

Shuddering the frost sprite watched as Pitch flexed his now clawless hand against the ground. Jack remembering all the while that same hand, partnered with its brother had restrained him a mere few minutes ago while Pitch nearly began eating his neck.

Not able to help himself Jack trembled again, he jumped when a low voice rumbled haughtily at him.

"Would you please… _Stop._ **That**."

It took a moment for Jack to get over the startling rush of adrenaline from Pitch's abrupt, angry voice. The boogeyman had been so quiet for so long the sudden sound was jarring to Jack's already shaky nerves.

"Stop what? Standing here? Would you prefer it if I was dancing around you instead?" Jack sniped; being nervous always made him irritable and sharp-tongued.

It was a weak defense mechanism but a defense all the same.

There was another growl from Pitch but it was less scary and more irritated then anything else. It sounded more like Pitch, what he supposed was to sound like anyway. Not like how he sounded when he plastered himself to Jack's front, his voice not his own but inhuman and chorused with many hungry smiling mouth's.

Jack bit his lip and looked over his shoulder to the way out. He knew that he really was in over his head, but he also knew he should stay.

He needed to stay.

 " _That_!" Pitch hissed.

Jack jerked his eyes back down at Pitch. He flinched slightly when he met the shadow wielder's burning gaze. The boogeyman was still on the floor but had twisted himself around to glare up crossly at Jack. His eyes still glowing yellow, the irises rimmed with silver.

Jack took that as a good sign, but it did very little to sooth the prickling ever-present fear Jack had been wrestling with since gliding down into Pitch's lair.

"You’re gonna have to be a little more specific on what ‘ _that'_ is," Jack shot back, "I'm not doing anything."

"Yes you are! You're doing it now." Pitch rasped, his voice echoed by several lower menacing voices. "And unless you want to draw them out again you must leave or stop being afraid of me!"

Pitch broke their eye contact and glared at the fearlings swaying lazily around him, his shoulders lifted and collapsed sucking in deep, painful sounding breathes. Jack didn't move or say anything. He watched on as Pitch hunched down closer to the floor and seemed to be in a struggle for control.

Control over… **what**?

Control over **himself**?

Or control over the things that were still sluggishly leaking out of his skin like black silt?

A fresh stab of fear knifed its way through Jack's guts. Pitch's mouth fell open and he screwed his eyes shut, but not before Jack saw the golden light within them flare up and glow brighter like before.

"Jack…. _stop_ …"

Large grey hands that kept Pitch propped up curled and unfurled on the floor, his long frame tensing and relaxing as if he were fighting himself on getting up or staying down. Pitch began shaking terribly, his face drawn tight and pinched with pain. The fearings began making a violent hissing sound their shadowed limbs grabbed at and yanked at the Nightmare King. They seemed to urge him to move but the shade stayed down, teeth grinding and body convulsing horribly against the onslaught.

The fear that had frozen Jack in place melted away to anger, Jack suddenly wanted very badly to snatch the dark oozing shapes away from Pitch. Then Jack would like to toss the wretches in a large fireplace, much like the extravagant ones North always had merrily burning in his workshop. The young Guardian liked to believe the miserable creatures wouldn't last long in the roaring flames that had been burning for ages. That once thrown inside they would melt away like snow on a summer sidewalk.

It was a comforting thought.

Jack was still fuming away on this new tantalizing notion when a relieved sigh brought him back to the present.

Pitch seemed to have calmed down. His smudged grey and black form steadily uncoiling and hands now flat and resting along the cool stone floor. The ominous black oozing creatures had been tucked neatly away and out of sight but Jack wasn't fooled at all. He knew they weren't really gone; more like they had just been swept away like unsightly grime under a rug. This was clear when Pitch finally gathered himself up off the floor. The Nightmare King waved off Jack's offer to help him up, the shade took a few generous paces away.

Pitch's new disconcerting strangeness resettled around him like a black veil that clung to his face and limbs as he slunk nervously away.

Although the fearlings weren't visibly present, if Jack listened hard enough he swore he could make out hushed rasps, whispers and hisses. The noises were coming from everywhere on Pitch except from his mouth that remained pressed tight into a hard thin line.

The moments that followed Pitch climbing his way back up to his feet were awful bouts of complete silence. Jack counted his heartbeats patiently waiting for the other to say something. To offer him some sort of well earned explanation but as the heartbeats clicked on there was still nothing and finally Jack gave up and sighed in frustration. He squared his thin shoulders and faced Pitch while the older spirit remained halfway turned away, unwilling or more likely unable to meet Jack's gaze. Pitch's eyes were silver once more and had taken to intently studying the floor below him as if it were pages to the world's best-selling novel.

Jack supposed he was to be the mature one here so he cleared his throat and eloquently testing the waters.

"Ok so that… just happened….not that I really know what that was…" He ran his hand along the back of his neck, wincing when his fingers caught on swelling bruises so he swept his fingers up into his hair instead. Jack was half tempted to pull several clumps out in agitation when Pitch still said nothing. In fact it seemed the shade had drawn himself even further way, sneaky bastard.

 "Mind filling me in?" Jack asked and waited.

Nothing.

Huffing he tried again." I think it's the very least you could do after you nearly took a giant bite out of me like a fat guy with a bagel!"

Pitch snorted, then tried to cover it up with an extremely unconvincing cough.

"So you do still understand the English language!" Jack exclaimed sarcastically. "So why not put it to good use and tell me what the hell is going on with you?"

"Mind your language and tone with me, boy." Pitch rumbled and finally met Jack's hard gaze with one equally if not more so.

Jack didn't mind this he was relieved to have Pitch talking and looking at him again. Glaring and arguing with each other was familiar, safe ground. As ridiculous as that seemed. Jack could handle himself with this version of Pitch. So without missing a beat or allowing the other to recover and return to silent brooding Jack lumbered on with his usual conversational prowess and grace.

"With who? With _you_?" Jack asked wonderingly, twisting himself comically about as he glanced and searched around them.

Jack made to be looking around as if there were some grand person present besides himself and Pitch. Settling his eyes back on a now scowling boogeyman, Jack lazily shrugged his shoulders and grinned pleasantly.

"I don't have to impress you, our relationship is solid enough that we can really be ourselves around each other don't you think?"

"What _I_ think Jack, is that you have over stayed your already _unwelcome_ welcome here." Pitch replied and started briskly toward Jack all broody and business like.

For a half hysterical second Jack though perhaps Pitch might grab at him again, the young guardian flinching away only to have Pitch sweep past him, shadows nipping at his heels. Spinning around Jack kept Pitch in his sight, his body tense and ready just in case. Jack was caught off guard however as Pitch continued to ignore him, walking several yards away to the room's far side until he came to stand in front of a large mass of shadows that were climbing up a huge stonewall. Their forms indistinct as they rolled off the surface horizontally a few feet before falling back on each other to form new unpleasant shapes. The frost spirit couldn't see how far the wall extended up, after about a hundred feet it disappeared into the dark abyss that was Pitch's ceiling. For all Jack knew the black could be just more countless living shadows.

Jack hadn't noticed the swarm of fearlings being there before, but it had taken a long time for his eyes to adjust to the murky grey of Pitch's ‘lovely' home. That and he had been immediately preoccupied once entering and being so enthusiastically welcomed by the very Nightmare King himself.

His back to Jack, Pitch raised a hand toward the wall of twisting darkness and hissed something urgently at them from under his breath. Jack was too far away to make it out and he sure as hell wasn't about to go any closer. He noted that the writhing mass of black had hundreds of pinpoint glowing, yellow eyes.  Most of those eyes seemed to be looking at Jack more than they were looking at Pitch even though he was their master and was considerably closer.

The burning flickering gold was unpleasantly familiar.

‘How nice they have their daddy's peepers' Jack thought to himself in bad taste. He couldn't help it, joking and fun was his only weapon against Pitch and the painfully awkward, dangerous situations the boogeyman dragged Jack into.

Watching in disgust Jack could make out one of the larger oily creatures splitting and twisting itself semi free from the rest. It oozed down the wall lazily toward Pitch. The shade murmured something at it in a tone that was more irritated than before, Pitch’s hand grasping empty air gesturing that he wanted to be given something. After a few more heated words the thing finally started moving to claw violently at its center.

Revolted, Jack groaned quietly to himself as its gnarled dripping fingers finally found purchase on something inside of itself. The creature started to tug and pull free an object out from what Jack supposed was its chest. It then deposited the mystery item into Pitch's impatiently hand. The fearling slid away to rejoin with the rolling mass.

Pitch faced back around to Jack the object in his hand still oozing liquid shadows and all sorts of bad voodoo. The boogeyman raised a non-existent eyebrow at Jack's stunned expression and increased paleness.

Pitch was treating him with a sumptuous banquet of unpleasant situations and spectacles today, no doubt so that he could pray on Jack's nightmares later once he fell asleep. That is if Jack could ever fall asleep again knowing that stuff like this actually existed in the world he lived in and preyed upon children's fears.

Jack miserably wished he had possessed the foresight to look away. It felt as if he had swallowed a dozen live eels that were now squirming and coiling around each other in his stomach.

"I uh…I don't know what to….say…Pitch…. that was not really…ok…" Jack searched himself for legible words. and in the mean time he offered up the first things that came to mind in a desperate attempt to ease over what he just seen.

Pitch sighed and walked toward him, slower this time so as not to further spook the gibbering boy. As Pitch steadily drew closer Jack went quiet, staring down with growing horror as more and more of the black gunk sloshed off of what Pitch was holding. The object began to take a familiar shape.

"Hey….that.… kinda looks like…" Jack's mouth fell open and Pitch couldn't contain a sharp-toothed smirk at the frost sprite's comically shocked expression.

"It's fine Jack." Pitch offered drawing closer and holding out Jack's staff for him to take and then hopefully leave.

"How.. **HOW IS THAT OK**?!" Jack yelled pointing at the still dripping staff.

Gooey, thick black droplets slid off the once beautiful wood to fall splattering on to the hard floor below where they immediately sunk into the stone surface. This should have been impossible because liquid just doesn't DO that. Jack should know he spends a lot of his time dealing with liquids via freezing them and seeing them eventually melt. But be it water, juice, blood or even gelatin, the stuff doesn't just soak into polished stone rock!

It seemed like this observation should have been insignificant. An unrelated thought to be having at all but it wasn't, not really. The random notion of how a liquid should and shouldn't behave given a certain surface was actually quiet rational because it brought to light the obvious unnaturalness of what Pitch had marinated his weapon in. It wasn't like Jack could ring his staff out!

What if the fearlings had corrupted his staff like they were so obviously corrupting Pitch?

What if, once he touched it, the black inky droplets would sink into his skin like they did the stone floor, spreading out and rooting in deep?  Although Jack was offered his weapon back, it really felt as if his staff was destroyed once more.

How could Pitch do this to him again?!

" **LOOK** AT IT PITCH!!" Jack continued yelling, the boogeyman's eyes widened and indeed he looked at what had Jack so upset. "It's **RUINED**! You might as well snap it in half again!"

The last part of the phrase went hoarse as Jack's throat drew tight and his eyes burned and vision blurred. Pitch looked back up at Jack and stared at him with a lost expression on his face.

Jack didn't know why he felt so betrayed. This was Pitch Black; enemy of himself and the Guardians Jack was allied to. How could he expect Pitch to do any differently really?  He made it his existence's purpose to destroy everything that Jack and the Guardians created

Except ….

 _Except_ , Jack had always believed that the two of them had a subtle understanding of one another. An understanding that had taken life when Pitch approached Jack at the South Pole, describing in perfect understanding of what it was like to be truly alone and abandoned. Pitch had looked so hurt and desperate in that moment….

 ….so vulnerable and painfully hopeful.

‘All those years in the shadows I thought…that no one else knows what this feels like… but…now I see I was wrong…'

‘ _We don't have to be alone….Jack….'_

_‘I believe in you…'_

Jack hadn't been able to hold any great disdain for the Nightmare King since then because in that moment Jack truly understood Pitch. He understood why Pitch did the things he did. Why the boogeyman took his actions to such extravagantly cruel extremes. Jack would watch along the Guardians, as Pitch clawed and grabbed at any shred of acknowledgment even if that attention was steeped in loathing.

Just as Jack understood why Pitch would return to try to fail again...

….and again.

…and again.

 Even if it meant getting the stuffing beat out of him each and every single time by the Guardians.

It was because despite all that pain and humiliation, the glares and yelled threats directed at the Nightmare King, Jack knew it was still…. something.

It was still someone looking at you.

It was still someone seeing you and hearing you, if only for a short morsel of time.

The fact of the matter was that Pitch had been alone much longer than Jack had. There had been no light at the end of the dark tunnel for Pitch like there had been for Jack when he became a Guardian. Jack had been saved and freed from his loneliness and solitude. The frost sprite sympathized with Pitch and he had thought, naïvely that Pitch might have empathized a little with him too.

But he had obviously been wrong.

Jack was ready to turn around and leave right then and there. Let Pitch deal with whatever the hell he had done to himself on his own.  If the boogeyman was so hell-bent on burning every olive branch extended to him then this would be the last time Jack would offer him anything at all. Jack was piecing together a particularly good ‘fuck you very much' mini rant when Pitch's expression changed as if he had just made up his mind about something.

The young Guardian gasped and stumbled gracelessly forward as long fingers wrapped firmly around his wrist and tugged insistently up.

"He..hey!" Jack was more shocked at the fact that Pitch had touched him (again and was still touching him actually thank you very much) than the real movement or the act of being forcibly moved itself.

Jack stared bewildered at Pitch, who simply lifted a corner of his lips in an almost smile. The shadowmancer turned Jack's arm by his thin wrist so that his hand was facing the ceiling and Pitch's amused gaze. Familiar wood, warmed by Pitch's hand pressed into Jack's open palm; he hadn't realized he had unclenching his fists. Jack broke eve contact and watched in amazement as the staff purified itself within his grasp.

The black inky stands hissing and evaporating away to a substance that Jack could only describe as a light grey steam. Within a few seconds the mocha colored wood was once again shimmering with intricate frosted patterns inspired by Jack's touch and completely free of any oily black.

Jack brought the staff up just shy of his nose. His eyes wide and mouth agape, missing how Pitch brushed his thumb lightly across his wrist's pulse point before letting Jack go.

"Don't worry Jack my disease isn't contagious unless I want it to be."  Pitch offered falsely reassuring, his smile turning into something dangerous and insincere.

"Yeah…thank you? I guess….even though you stole it and messed it up in the first place…"  Jack muttered the last part under his breath but guessing by the way Pitch narrowed his eyes at him he had heard it.

Jack frowned in puzzlement as he continued to study the now completely flawless staff.

"It's…completely fine….but how is that-" Jack began asking but was cut off.

"Glorious. Truly. Now please leave."  Pitch said curtly, swiveling away. He clasped his hands behind his back as he went indicating that they were done talking.

Jack **had** been about to ask that if getting rid of the fearling's influence was so simple why didn't Pitch just clear the creatures away for himself? That they were clearly out of his control and hurting him so why was he hesitating at all?

 Of course the boogeyman had interrupted him and now was effectively giving Jack the cold shoulder and expecting him to leave.

The hell he was. They weren't done here not by a long shot.

"What?! No way! Are you forgetting **what just happened**?!" Jack exclaimed.

Pitch in turn vanished into the shadows.

"Oh well isn't that mature?! How old are you again?" The frost spirit challenged loudly to the surrounding darkness, his voice echoing hollowly back at him. He knew Pitch was still listening, he could feel eyes watching him, the weight was heavy and spiny on Jack's skin.

"You coward! Seriously!? You fucking--"

"Would you just **LEAVE** Jack!" The darkness became oppressive and thick as molasses. The words hurled at Jack like heavy stones.

"No I won't! You obviously need some help!" Jack held his ground, searching the darkness intently. Jack willed his eyes to adjust so he could better see.

"Oh? Do I?" Pitch asked, sounding very bored and sarcastic.

 The shadows below Jack's bare feet curled up and wrapped around his ankles. The tendril fell away quickly when Jack shot frost at them. The young Guardian grit his teeth, he was losing his patience with Pitch's avoiding antics.

"Yes! You do! Would you stop sulking around in the shadows so I don't feel like I'm talking to the walls?"

Abruptly Pitch appeared behind him just shy of a few inches; Jack jumped as warm breath puffed across his right ear. The winter sprite chose to stay rooted in place and not to skittishly spin around or shove Pitch away. He wasn't about to give Pitch the satisfaction of knowing he was getting under his skin.

Again.

"Pray tell… how shall… **You**. Help. **Me**. Jack? How would you go about it _really_?" Pitch inquired mockingly.

The Nightmare King placed the sharp tips of his nails along the back of Jack's neck. He lightly ran them down the sensitive skin there and then up daringly into Jack's white, wind-blown hair.

The fingers slowly spread themselves out, lacing heat into the back of Jack's head. It was not an unpleasant sensation, but it was alien to the ever-present cold Jack was accustom to. A distressed, agitated noise escaped Jack's lips sensing Pitch moving even closer until his chest rested lightly along Jack’s back. The shade's fingers trailed to Jack's temple; Pitch softly shushes Jack and goes on weaving his way through the silky tresses.

Finally Jack yanks himself away giving Pitch the victory he was after of unnerving the younger spirit. Smoothing the back of his hair down with his own hands Jack turns to face the boogeyman with a few feet safely separating them.

Pitch's hand was still raised from where it had rested in Jack's hair. The shade slowly lowered it looking down at the space between them with an expression that Jack could only describe as…disappointment.

Giving himself a mental shake Jack realigned his mindset and got back on track.

"Pitch you can't stay here…"

Pith blinks distractedly at Jack, the smaller spirit could nearly see the gears turning and puzzling away in Pitch's head.

"Why not? This is my home." Pitch replies slowly and matter a fact.

"I don't know if you've taken a **good look around** lately but this place isn't really _YOUR_ home anymore .It’ more like a infested hole in the ground." Jack shudders seeing indistinct objects in his peripheral vision squirming in and out of the muddy darkness as if taking offense to his words.

Pitch says nothing.

Jack gives himself a few precious moments to carefully select out his next words. He feels as if he has ventured out on the thin side of the branch so to speak.

"Look leaving may not make a huge difference.."  Jack begins his voice tempered and delicate.

If he could make the texture of the words themselves sound pleasant perhaps it would help Pitch find the meaning behind them appealing as well.

"But staying here certainly isn't going to help. It's as if they are eating you alive Pitch..."  Jack finishes. The frost sprite allows genuine worry to show on his face and in his voice so that Pitch could see the severity of his predicament.

"Where would you have me go Jack?" Pitch asks exasperated, but honest in his irritation.

Jack can't help the leap of excitement in his chest that he is actually getting through to the Nightmare King and quickly rushes on.

" _Anywhere_ else! Anywhere but _here_!" Jack exclaims pointing toward the way out of the hellhole Pitch so affectionately named a home

"I can't…. **JUST LEAVE**.." Pitch erupts; shadows pull themselves out of the floor by his feet and swarm angrily around Pitch's legs much like threatened hornets. They were trying to pluck and pull him away from Jack.

"Can't….just leave them…."

"Why the hell not?!" Jack half yelled, satisfied when Pitch starts at the loud noise, coming back to himself.

"Watch your language." Pitch rumbles dangerously but Jack cuts him off.

"No seriously! **_Why_** **NOT**?!" Jack challenges. "Why can't you?"

Pitch's face changes from anger to something lost and sad.

"This is…..it's the only place I belong." Pitch says quietly, his golden eyes looking around the vast cavern around them.

Empathy and pity rise up in Jack’s chest, but he squashes it down quickly. No one should feel as if they belong only to darkness and loneliness.

"Then find a new place to belong." Jack amends firmly, not allowing his pity for Pitch soften his resolve.

Pitch pauses his expression unreadable.                                                                                                                         

"Oh, well isn't _that_ a quant little notion! Why didn't I think of that!" The Nightmare King hisses out and sweeps forward. The shadows glide down off his shoulders and flutter behind him as the shade walks a tight circle Jack.

Pitch's form bleeds and blends away to mix with that of the fearlings abstract shapes becoming one with them and their fury.

"I never _asked_ for nor have I ever wanted _your_ opinion."

"I'm just trying to help you Pitch…" Jacks replies as calmly as he can with Pitch prowling around him and fearlings glaring hatefully at him as they follow their host.

The well-intended words seem to have an opposite effect however. Instead of soothing or comforting Pitch like Jack had intended, the older spirit twists violently as if he were splashed with acid.

Pitch snarls raggedly and disappears completely as hundreds of fearlings crawl forward to join with him, forming a huge black mass.

" **AND** I never **WANTED THAT EITHER**!"  Pitch's booms all around Jack, parroted mockingly by the fearling's voices.

Jack flinched. His hand tightening instinctively on his staff, hundreds of yellow eyes follow the reflex and hiss at the hostile gesture.

There's a long beat of silence before Pitch speaks again, his words falsely warm and dripping with venom.

"Why would **I** want help from someone who couldn't even help **themselves**?" Pitch asked.

Jack swallows thickly. He foolishly strains to listen for the next onslaught of poisonous words when he knows he should probably be covering them instead. Situations such as these were similar to those where you helplessly watch a car lose control or a small animal dart out into a busy street.

You know you _shouldn't_ look.

You _shouldn't_ listen…

….but you can't help yourself and you can’t simply look away.

Jack always believed that ignorance was not bliss…it was just ignorance. He knew he was going to hate the words Pitch picked out for him next, but that didn’t mean he would stop listening.

"Someone who needed not _one_ but **FOUR** supernatural beings to get their _pathetic_ excuse of an existence back on track. If you could even call hurling snowballs desperately after children so that someone might actually pay attention to you _back on track_."  Pitch continuous, indistinct and hidden away in the shadows.

Jack swallows down mouth full after mouth full of stagnant air, desperate for it somehow. The horrible words make Jack numb and dizzy. It felt as if several thorny vines had constricted themselves around Jack's diaphragm and where squeezing and _squeezing_.

"I don't want _you_ here and I certainly do not want _your_ help!" Shadows tear across Jack's arms and legs biting furiously at his pale cheeks. The frost sprite stumbles and nearly losses his balance in the furious onslaught.

"Why….why are you doing… this?" Jack whispers miserably, pain seeping into his voice and tears welling up in his eyes.

 For a moment the shadows stop their attack and sway stunned and silent. After a few beats they begin to wrap desperately around Jack pulling at him in all directions. Hundreds of intangible clawed hands clutch at him and card through his hair. Hands that stroke his cheeks and coil all around him as if they were seeking relief from some unknown pain.

‘ _Please…. Please.Please.Pleeaaaseeee_.' Was hissed and murmured in Jack's ear, their grasping and grabbing grew stronger and more frantic.

Jack whimpered and they all froze once more and melt away. Breathing heavily Jack slowly brings his arms down and away from his eyes unaware that he had used them as a make shift shield. He hears labored, pained breathing that is not his own and Jack makes to start toward it but was thrown back by a wall of darkness.

 ** _"GET OUT!"_** The shadows scream along with Pitch.

 ** _"GET OUT YOU PATHETIC BOY!!! GET OUT!!!"_** The howling continues and grows louder nearly deafening,

Jack grits his teeth.

**_“I DON'T NEED NOR DO I WANT YOU HERE!!!"_ **

"FINE!" Jack screams back and abruptly pulls the wind down the tunnel leading to Pitch’s layer to lift himself up. His motions were clumsy and jarring, his face burning with embarrassment and anger.

Jack shot past the thing that was Pitch making sure to send a particularly strong gust at it out of spite. The wind carring him swiftly to the ceiling of the Nightmare King's festering wound of a lair and out into dazzling sunlight.

He doesn’t pause.

He doesn’t look back.

Pitch miserably watches the boy go, staggering against the blast of wind Jack had hurled at him on his way out. The shade shudders in the looming darkness voices already filling up the space Jack had left by mockingly calling his name. Pitch clenches his hands in his hair and lets out an agonized groan, the voices roaring louder and louder in his ears.

"Shut up… _shut up_ … **SHUT UP**!!!" Pitch snarls at the darkness crawling toward him from across the walls.

They answer his distress with bone rattling laughs and taunting growls.

 

* * *

 

 

Jack was a simple sort of fellow and he enjoyed simple things.

So when the Guardians had offered to create for him a home that was as lavish and spectacular as that of their own Jack had politely refused. Instead Jack made a home for himself deep in a frozen wooded place out of a large ancient tree overlooking the rest of the forest atop a steep sweeping hill. It was an enormous specimen of a tree if Jack did say so himself, it having lived almost as long as he had.  The tree’s trunk was wider than three medium sized cars lined up bumper-to-bumper and far far taller.

Jack _had_ asked for some help from Bunnymund in preserving the tree's life, a gift only the bringer of spring and new beginnings could give. So the tree continued living around Jack as the spirit hollowed it out with his powers. He created small, but comfortable rooms that extended up all the way up to the tree's canopy connected by a narrow stairway.  The largest of the rooms was the first one at the base of the tree, this was the room Jack spent most of his time in and where he slept on the rare occasion

The area was lined with several thick shelves carved out of the tree itself, resting on top of them were the many knickknacks that had been gifted to Jack over the years by his few but fiercely loyal believers. The walls that housed the room and the other smaller rooms like it, were decorated in elaborate frost patterns that never melted. The intricate spirals winked and sparkled playfully in the dim light that played across the delicate surface. Each room had several windows with thin panes of ice for glass. In the far corner of the main room was a bed that took up a generous amount of space. The deep Prussian blue bedding with gold trim had been a gift from North several Christmas's ago and always smelled like cinnamon and stove warmed vanilla.

With a sigh Jack breezed into that very room, muttering about stupid, stubborn Nightmare Kings and how Pitch was the absolute worst kind of person. The young Guardian angrily plopped himself down on his bed, the wind closing the large wooden door that had also been carved from the tree. Several over sized silver pillows flopped over from where they had been placed neatly a few days before Jack had left.

Jack glared at them for their audacity and imagined them shrinking skittishly away in the glorious face of his fury.

After much more muttering and fidgeting Jack calmed down and looked out the small window over the head of his bed. A small smile lifted the corners of his lips as he saw he was in for a spectacular sunset. The eternal winter sky was painted in rich hues of yellows and pinks that were softly reflected in the thick blankets of snow below. Fluffy clouds caught hold of the colors for themselves and wore them on their rolling backs. The sky’s liquid color steadily melted away to blues and purples as the sun continued to sink below the horizon.

The sight soothed Jack and swept away the acidic words Pitch had thrown at him earlier. As he continued to watch the sunset Jack decided that he wasn't going to bother himself with Pitch again. That Jack shouldn't make Pitch his problem when the boogeyman so obviously wanted nothing to do with him.

It had been naïve of him….

 _Stupid_ even.

Jack wouldn't be making that same mistake twice.

Besides he had enough to deal with. He had countless children's spirits to lift and joy to spread. Jack couldn't be weighted down with something as dangerous and unpredictable as Pitch.

He shouldn't have been foolish enough to try.

So that was that then, Jack rested his staff against a small table next to his bed and decided to take the night off and sleep for once in how long Jack didn't know. He needed the comfort of sleep after the ordeal he had been through today. He pushed the pillows back into their rightful place and engulfed himself under heavy blankets. They wouldn't warm him of course but he enjoyed the way that they felt and smelled.

Tomorrow was a new day after all and Jack was anything if not an optimist.

That was… until upon waking the following morning to find Pitch collapsed in a pitiful heap several yards from his doorstep.

Tomorrow was new day indeed….

 

 


End file.
